Following a two-year refurbishment, the storied royal residence reopens in London with engaging exhibits

When it comes to royal residences, tradition typically trumps innovation. But following a two-year, £12 million ($19 million) renovation—underwritten with contributions from the Heritage Lottery Fund as well as other public and private sources—London’s Kensington Palace now impressively blends both old and new. Though still suffused with reverence for the past, the palace features a multitude of surprises conceived by cutting-edge talents, including cheeky exhibition-design studio Coney, award-winning set and costume designer Joanna Scotcher, and conservation-minded landscape architect Todd Longstaffe-Gowan.

Originally an earl’s country residence, Kensington Palace has primarily served as a royal apartment complex since the late 17th century, when it was purchased by William III and Mary II and the redbrick structure was greatly enlarged by architect Sir Christopher Wren. Since then the palace’s chambers have been occupied by everyone from Queen Anne to Diana, Princess of Wales. Presently its private spaces are home to the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke and Duchess of Kent, and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. In 2013 the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (William and Kate) are expected to move into the 20-room flat formerly occupied by Princess Margaret, the Queen’s late sister.

The reopening of the state rooms and gardens to the public has occurred just in time for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, celebrating her 60th year on the throne. Longstaffe-Gowan’s enhancements include eliminating railings, fences, and shrubs that had undermined 18th-century royal gardener Charles Bridgeman’s original landscaping. He also installed two new public gardens to the south and east of the palace that connect the property to Kensington Gardens. It’s a subtle change but an important one, transforming a once hands-off urban estate into a veritable people’s palace.

Indoors, visitors now journey through a sweep of exhibits incorporating cutting-edge digital presentations, interactive experiences, and even audio sequences that bring exceptional energy to the gatherings of gowns, antique furniture, and other memorabilia. Five dresses worn by Princess Diana are displayed through September; among them is a low-cut black-taffeta Emanuel gown that prompted one wag to say of the then Lady Diana Spencer, “Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before a king?”

When it comes to the State Apartment displays, Coney and Scotcher’s teamwork is more about thought-provoking playfulness than it is about artifacts in glass cases. The Queen’s Staircase is filled with old suitcases and trunks, evoking the arrival of the Protestant William III and Mary II from Holland, following the ouster of Mary’s Catholic father, James II. Dozens of porcelain birds streak across the ceiling of the Queen’s Gallery, while a tornado-like light sculpture by Loop.pH design studio occupies the Stone Hall, its funnel shape composed of electroluminescent wire dappled with Swarovski crystals.

In the “Victoria Revealed” exhibit, designed by the firm OPERA Amsterdam, life-size silhouettes of 18th-century courtiers in revelrous poses are hauntingly cast on the walls of the Red Saloon, while the word “love” is woven in lipstick-red script across a custom-made carpet in a chamber devoted to the Queen’s obsessive courtship of her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The Duty Room is a tribute to the monarch’s daily grind, empty except for a dark wood desk piled with the traditional red leather dispatch boxes, which hold the documents requiring the attention of the crowned head. Eye-opening details further enliven the parade of exhibits, including a pair of Queen Victoria’s stockings—complete with an erotically charged diary entry she wrote about the first time her husband put them on her legs.